These thorough notes examine the feminist perspective on the family by looking at the liberal, radical and Marxist feminist approaches to this topic and a range of sociological concepts such as that of the 'safety valve'. I ensure that criticisms of each perspective are included, because that's wha...
Marxist feminists believe that capitalism uses the family to oppress women.
1. Women In Margaret Benston’s (1972) Marxist feminist study: ‘The Political
constitute a Economy of Women’s Liberation’, she argues that capitalism benefits from
a large reserve labour force of women ‘to keep wages down and profits up’.
reserve army
In their role as secondary breadwinners, married women provide a source
of labour. of cheap and easily exploitable labour.
2. The production As wives…
of labour
Margaret Benston argues that women, by performing their traditional roles
power!
in families, perform a lot of unpaid labour (taking care of children, cooking,
cleaning etc.) which
Some Marxists benefits the capitalist
believe that class, because they
women, in only have to pay one
performing their person in the family –
traditional roles the male breadwinner
as wives and – a wage.
mothers benefit
capitalists and Safety valve!
the capitalist
system by
Furthermore, the woman’s role as a housewife means she sustains the
reproducing
labour power at current labour force by attending to her husband’s emotional needs for
no cost to free which keeps him in good running order to perform his role in supplying
employers! effective waged labour [thus benefitting capitalism].
Fran Ansley shares a similar view; she sees the emotional support
provided by the wife as a safety valve for the frustration produced in the husband
by working in a capitalist system. Rather than being turned against the
system which produced it, this frustration is absorbed by the comforting
wife. In this way the system is not threatened.
As mothers…
She’s also responsible for nurturing the next generation of workers and
socialising them into capitalist beliefs, thus producing the next generation of
workers for free.
The social reproduction of labour power does not simply involve producing
Ideological children and maintaining them in a good health. Rather, it also involves the
reproduction of attitudes essential for an efficient workforce under capitalism.
conditioning:
David Cooper argues that the family is ‘an ideological conditioning
device in an exploitive society’. Within the family, children learn to
conform and to submit to authority, thus laying the foundation for an
obedient and submissive workforce required by capitalism. Similarly, Diane
Feeley sees the family as authoritarian unit dominated by the husband in
particular and adults in general where children are indoctrinated by an
‘authoritarian ideology designed to teach passivity, not rebellion’.
Thus, they learn to submit to paternal authority which socialises them
into accepting their place in the hierarchy of power and control in
capitalist society.
Criticisms of the As David Morgan argues in his criticism of both functionalist and Marxist
Marxist Feminist approaches, both ‘presuppose a traditional model of the nuclear family
Perspective on the where there is a married couple with children, where the husband is
Family: the breadwinner and where the wife stays at home to deal with
housework’. However, this pattern is becoming less common and so the
critique of this type of family may therefore be less important or less
applicable today. =
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